May 11, 2004
WAR: The Wrong Thing
Stryker has the best gut-level reaction I've seen to the whole Iraq prisoner-abuse story . . . I haven't yet gotten to a longer post on the subject - as you may have noticed, I don't always like to jump on issues I haven't had a chance to think through - but, at the end of the day, (1) I don't have a problem, and I suspect the chain of command all the way up to Rumsfeld didn't have a problem, with some fairly rough interrogation techniques (in terms of imposing psychological pressure) for getting critical information out of captured insurgents, but (2) saying that you can live with "rough interrogation techniques" or were aware they were being used is a far cry from accepting the sort of sicko sexual abuse and degradation we've seen depicted. And beware of anyone who tries the bait-and-switch tactic of blaming the higher-ups for knowing about (2) if all they expected was going on was (1). (Greyhawk over at Mudville Gazette, in a post linked by Instapundit, caught Seymour Hersh in a similar bait-and-switch talking about civilian detainees who were not housed in the controversial part of the prison and aren't part of the allegations here).
UPDATE: Deacon over at Powerline notes a similar bait-and-switch.
Here's a quality link unrelated to this post. Had no where to put it. Comments?
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_patriotboy_archive.html#108424201500072425